Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Connector conundrum

What is one supposed to do with the BNC connector pictured right?

I ordered 5x Crimp On BNC Plugs from eBay, expecting to get plugs with a narrow body and separate small piece of tube that you use to crimp the braid of the cable to the body of the plug. What I actually got was these, which I already had a couple of and didn't know how to use. The only way I can see that you could use these is to crimp the large diameter barrel on to the braid itself, but with nothing but the nylon insulation beneath it you are not going to get a good contact. I think they are useless, though I did make a QRPP dummy load from one of the originals as two 1/4W 100 ohm resistors in parallel just fit inside the body of the plug and you can solder the ground ends to the outer.

I guess soldering the braid is the answer, but that isn't what I bought crimp on plugs for and it isn't going to make a very neat job.